HP iPAQ 312 Travel Companion GPS

[Long]

Review originally published on my blog.

I would say I'm quite good with maps and for that reason I've never needed a GPS device. Having said that, I'm also deeply intrigued by the technology. Today I received a HP iPAQ 312 Travel Companion to review.

Prior to this, I had no idea Hewlett Packard had made a GPS product. This is in fact their second. Still, I was a little worried they might be stepping into unfamiliar territory and the quality of this product would reflect their lack of experience in the field. Having played with it now, it has overcome all my fears and I believe there's no reason why anyone looking for a GPS device should exclude this from their list. Here's my what I found.

At the first impression, you'll come to admire how beautiful the user interface is on this gorgeous high-resolution (800?480) resolution screen. Each icon is finely detailed and there are plenty of them. The cool blue theme is consistent yet refreshing.

The interface is also well optimized for touch, the only method of input. Unlike the capacitative multi-touch craze, this device uses the traditional resistive touch technology which means any object forced onto the display will register. A stylus is included and sits in a slot on top of the device, but because the buttons are so large anyway there's little if any reason to use them.

You might be led to believe this device is running a custom operating system - perhaps Symbian or Java, but in fact like most of the other HP iPAQ devices it runs Windows, Windows CE 5.0 to be exact. And no, it hasn't crashed. This is a great example of a Windows device that doesn't scream Windows.

By looking at some of the promotional HP images of this device, you might be easily convinced that this is a large device, but in fact it's very compact. In comparison, it's smaller than my mouse. There's minimal bevel around the generous 4.3-inch screen. Whilst the screen size doesn't hinder readability, it would have been nice if it was just a little bigger to space out the smaller buttons a little more.

On the right side is a rotatable and clickable scroll wheel - similar feel to a mouse scroll wheel, this serves as an easy way to zoom in and out of maps as well as changing volume and screen brightness. There is also a rubber flap for antenna, headphone and USB connectors. And at the very bottom, a small reset button.

On the left side is the slot for the Secure Digital card. No SD card is required to operate the device, however you can access the media stored on it.

A big selling feature of this device is the 3D map capability, which is a combination of the software and third-party mapping data. Unfortunately the digital map data in Australia is very primitive and does not show buildings and other structures as it would in US or Europe, but you can still see some of the 3D effects on bridges as above.

Personally, I find myself switching back to 2D view again and again because 3D view is quite processing incentive, and doesn't give the fluid experience of panning around a map very well.

This device had no problems routing all the routes I threw at it, including those in outer suburbia. All the returned routes were exactly the ones I know are the best from personal experience. Routing journeys of around 40 kilometers (25 miles) took less than 4 seconds. Route recalculations such as those from a wrong turn were under 2 seconds. In the route details screen, it was smart enough to show me how many kilometers were traveled on highways and if there were any tolled highways or roads.

However if you're a freeloader like myself, you can easily set up to avoid toll roads as well as many others unfavorable road features.

The turning point of this device for me from just a digital map to a useful driving tool is this feature of address filtering. I'm not too familiar with GPS devices so I'm not sure how many of them offer similar functionality like this, but what it does is it prevents you from typing addresses which do not exist such as road names and suburb names.

For example, after you input a suburb, it will only allow you to type the roads that exist in that suburb. This filtering continues to cut down letter-by-letter. When appropriate, it will switch views to present you with a list of options you can select.

The same applies to street numbers too.

The text-to-speech synthesizer is equally impressive as well.Whilst it doesn't announce street names> Impressively, it even announces street names through the text-to-speech engine available on some languages including US English but not Australian English, a feature usually available on devices $200 more expensive than this. It provides very clear and natural directions via the loudspeaker on the back.

Having walked around on foot with the device, the GPS accuracy has an error margin of around 10 meters which is not that much of a deal in a car. However after turning a corner and changing orientation, it is able to correct itself pretty much instantly. Surprisingly with the internal antenna, I was even able to receive some GPS signal on and off under a tin metal roof.

In addition to the navigation features, this device also includes a range of basic entertainment functions like viewing pictures, videos, music and a range of arcade games. I applaud for HP for trying to extend the device with useful multimedia features, but it really falls short.

The Achilles heel of this device is that it is severely underpowered. For example, when trying to play a standard-definition Windows Media Movie video, it was downright unwatchable almost like a picture slideshow. On top of that, when the announcer informed me the GPS signal had been lost, the video actually froze so the speech synthesizer could do its job. Either the multimedia software is severely unoptimized or the processor is not powerful enough, I hope HP takes this problem seriously for the next version. It could have been a serious PMP-contender, but the software and hardware is just not up to scratch.

Since I don't have a Bluetooth phone, I wasn't able to check out the Bluetooth connectivity features but at the least it offers hands-free answering capability to receive and dial calls. Most points of interest on the map also has a telephone number which makes it even easier to book reservations at your destinations without ever touching your phone.

The device comes with a standard set of accessories including USB cable, wall-socket power charger, car charger, car windscreen mount, dashboard mount as well as faux leather pouch.

At a recommended retail price of US$450, this GPS device does slip a little into the pricey side. Having briefly compared it with some competing products, I think the user interface alone might be worth its difference. For its second try, HP has built a very solid device with a great piece of software that really shows they're committed to the GPS experience as much as any of the other competitors. Can't wait to see where they'll go next.

Check out my Flickr gallery for more pictures of this device.

Update:> I decided to try out the HP Content Manager available from the iPAQ website. Much to my surprise, there’s an abundance of updates already available for my device which I believe to be fairly recent.

From here, I can download and install base software updates, map updates, POI updates, menu languages and voice languages. At the time of writing, there are 560MB worth of updates I’m downloading and installing. I’m going to see if this has any impact on performance.

Edited February 12, 2008 by Long

[Scirwode]

Wow, bright screen :| !

Scirwode

[Long]

Wow, bright screen :| !

Scirwode

Yep, and it helps makes it easy to view under sunlight as you might in a car.

[JMann Veteran]

Great Review like usual, finally remembered to favourite your Website. (Y)

[raider360]

Nice toy.

[betasp]

when trying to play a standard-definition Windows Media Movie video, it was downright unwatchable almost like a picture slideshow.

Can you provide more detail? What was the resolution/bit rate? If you don't know, how long was the file and what size was it?

[Premgenius]

I likse the GUI

[Digitalx]

Does it vibrate ?

[DaViD_BRaNDoN]

Wow, quite a thorough review. Thanks!

[MMaster23]

Does it vibrate ?

Why would it? No seriously .. I mean in a good way: Why would it vibrate?

[sider]

Nice review

can you turn off the UI and use the device as a normal wince device?

[VWW]

Nice review... i'm tempted to buy a GPS device but know almost nothing about them. One thing that concerns me is battery life. How long does this device last using GPS? Does it have a replaceable battery? How long does it take to charge from empty?

[sask]

Nice review... i'm tempted to buy a GPS device but know almost nothing about them. One thing that concerns me is battery life. How long does this device last using GPS? Does it have a replaceable battery? How long does it take to charge from empty?

Most people would just plug it into a cigarette lighter in the car to supply power. I believe the batteries usually last in the range of a few hours. It would really depend on the unit.

[Rappy Veteran]

Looks rather good, good review as well :)

[+Ryster Subscriber²]

For those asking about the spec, check out the link below for the spec on the 314 (similar to the 312 reviewed).

http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/uk/en/ho/WF...=reg_R1002_UKEN

[Simon Veteran]

Wow, awesome review, and awesome looking device!

[Long]

Nice review... i'm tempted to buy a GPS device but know almost nothing about them. One thing that concerns me is battery life. How long does this device last using GPS? Does it have a replaceable battery? How long does it take to charge from empty?

I wouldn't be able to give you an exact hours number, but I would say it's quite battery intensive, especially when it's in GPS mode. It does have a replaceable battery, but I don't think you'd want to swap out batteries while driving. The car charger is the most obvious way to go.

[VWW]

Most people would just plug it into a cigarette lighter in the car to supply power.

Obviously, but that doesn't really help when you are walking around with it :p

[psybapunk]

Love the MASSIVE picture on the front page, wow.

[Long]

Obviously, but that doesn't really help when you are walking around with it :p

Oh you'd be fine if you're day-hiking with it or something, it's not like it'll run out of battery half way. But you'll probably have problems with it if you're going on a multi-day camping trip.

[BilliShere]

the best interface ive seen in quite a while

[TruckWEB]

It seems like a good GPS, but reading more review of the device is turning me off....

From ZdNet:

http://review.zdnet.com/navigation/hp-ipaq...6-32595205.html

Disappointingly, the voice prompts were a bit soft even with the volume at its highest level and there was a bit of reverberation. Also, the text-to-speech directions weren't as smooth as some of the other GPS devices we tested as it mangled and chopped up the pronunciation of some street names. However, more concerning is the system's ineptitude at route recalculations. We missed a number of turns to test this functionality, and while the iPaq 310 was quick to come up with new directions, they were completely circuitous. Instead of coming up with a new route, it would try to have us go back to the point where we missed the actual turn instead of plotting a new course from our current location.

From Digital Trends:

http://reviews.digitaltrends.com/review4898.html

Since that route wasn?t working, pun intended, we decided to just enter our zip code. Once we did that, it asked us for ?name/zip code.? What is this supposed to mean? We tried typing in ?Starbucks? but it wouldn?t let us complete the word. We were befuddled, but this is pretty much par for the course on this device. The interface is utterly baffling.

The Terminator

We also had an issue with not being able to cancel navigation. Typically when you are navigating to a destination, and you navigate away from the screen giving you directions it?ll ask you if you want to cancel the route planning, but that is not the case with the 310; it keeps navigating, no matter what. In fact, if you choose a route and then decided to just cancel, it won?t, even if you go back to the home page. From there, pressing the ?map? button takes you back to the route you were previously navigating. One time we even turned it off because we were tired of hearing it tell us to turn here and go there, and it magically turned itself back on a few minutes later to tell us to make a turn. It?s literally like the Terminator as far as navigation goes.

Extras

You are supposed to be able to add music, movies and pictures to the 310, but we were unable to figure out how to do it. There?s nothing about importing content in the instructions, and when we connected the device to our PC we got a notice saying the drive in the 310 had to be formatted before it could be used.

CNet :

http://reviews.cnet.com/car-gps-navigation...7-32595205.html

The bad: The iPaq 310 was pretty awful at route recalculations, and the voice prompts weren't very loud or clear.

Most of the review site rate the HP device at 5/10 or at best, 6.3/10 - Very low score I would say. Only GPSReview.net (http://www.gpsreview.net/hp-ipaq-310/) gave a very good review. So I wonder if it's really good, o:|really bad....

:|

[Creamy]

Wow...didn't know about this thing. Looks really smooth, thanks for sharing! I'll check if its avaiable over here...

[Long]

It seems like a good GPS, but reading more review of the device is turning me off....

Okay here's what I have to say.

Audio

The device comes with dozens of voice languages. There's even dozens more non-English languages you can download yourself onto the device with the content manager software. Usually each language has at least 4 voices - 2 male, 2 female. Each of the male/female voices has a text-to-speech version, and a non-TTS version. The non-TTS versions - the ones that don't pronounce street names - are generally 'better sounding' because they're more consistent.

A couple of the voices ones can be very quiet even on maximum volume, which is what the ZDNet review refers to.

One of the voices is described as v1.1, as opposed to the standard v1.0. Whilst I don't know what determines their version number, it sounds way better than everything else. On that note, I hope they will eventually offer more v1.1 voices in the future.

Personally I prefer TTS so I stick to a v1.0 TTS voice. I picked one that sounded the best to me and wasn't quiet at all.

Basically, I can confirm there are problems with some of the voices, but the number of choices available make it a non-issue for me.

Routing

I have no problems entering addresses or navigating the interface. It is a very unique inteface I must admit and doesn't provide very clear instructions and how to get started. But once you play through it a few times, as you would, it's very to pick up what to do.

I've had no problems with actual route calculations. It takes me exactly where I would have went if I did it by hand, and even route recalculations when you make a wrong turn make sense too. It's never directed me in a loop, or a road which doesn't make sense for me. Of course, there's always changes to roads and sometimes it thinks you're going off-route when it's just a simple detour, but as long as you know what you're doing, it'll catch up pretty quickly.

Its not true you can't cancel a route, but it's not very straightforward to do so. You have to go to the 'route mapping' menu and click on "Remove Destination". I don't think it'll be very often you'll want to cancel a route anyway.

Extras

I agree with getting media onto the device is not very clear. By default, the device is inproperly configured and doesn't read anything from your SD card. After a few attempts, I got it to work. But since the device is really a poor portable media player anyway (like I've pointed out), I wouldn't bother in general.

Edited February 25, 2008 by Long